


Bed of Roses, Bed of Nails

by Laily



Series: Capsule Collection: Tales of Magic, of Sorrow, Joy and of Love [6]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Implied Mpreg (Past), Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Parent Loki (Marvel), Parent Stephen Strange, Postpartum Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:48:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28803081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laily/pseuds/Laily
Summary: Loki has the baby blues, and Stephen's heart is breaking.
Relationships: Loki/Stephen Strange
Series: Capsule Collection: Tales of Magic, of Sorrow, Joy and of Love [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1320092
Comments: 7
Kudos: 63





	Bed of Roses, Bed of Nails

Stephen awakened to a silence he had not experienced in a long time, certainly not in the last six-ish going on to seven-ish years since they had their first child. 

He sat up slowly. The block-out curtains were hiding the moon; therefore they were of no help in telling the time, but Stephen's flawless internal clock placed him somewhere between three and four...ish.

His stomach rumbled. 

That explained things. Like his eldest son Stian, he was not very magic when he was hungry. Loki on the other hand…

_Loki?_

Stephen patted the covers next to him. Sometimes when the night would get particularly chilly and there was not enough Stephen to wrap his legs around (they went for days, those legs) Loki would shift into something smaller…a cat, usually. A snake, if they happened to be arguing before bed and had gone on to sleep with Loki still peevish. 

Feeling nothing, he swept the covers off the bed entirely. 

He felt the sheets. They were cold.

Stephen's unease grew. 

He catapulted himself out of bed and hurriedly pulled his dressing gown around his waist. They had managed without live-in servants when it was just the four of them, but after the twins, and with Stephen being called away on Sorcerer Supreme business at the most inopportune hours of the night, they came to a compromise between privacy and necessity.

Speaking of the twins, they were thankfully quiet tonight. The last couple of days had the night nannies looking a little rough around the edges come morning. Stephen had not heard a peep out of either Freyr or Freyja since they retired to bed. 

He spared a cursory glance into his older children's bedroom where Stian and Aife were sound asleep, before padding soundlessly across the hall toward the nursery.

A tall familiar figure stood over the cribs.

"Loki?"

To his alarm, Stephen could not hear the sound of his own voice. _A silencing spell?_

Why had Loki cast a silencing spell over the nursery? What was his husband doing in the middle of the night in the dark?

He raised a hand to counter the spell when he caught sight of something that stayed his tongue. 

He watched Loki's shoulders hitch up and down silently from behind and felt something in him break. 

It was not supposed to be like this, he thought as his feet marched to close in the last few steps between them and his arms automatically moved to gather Loki's quivering shoulders to his chest. 

He was not supposed to hold his husband as Loki sobbed silently in the dark like this, rocking their newborn twins barely past three months of life, their own little mouths gaping in the throes of screams only Loki could hear.

_"Why didn't you wake me?"_

_"You need your rest,"_ Loki's telepathic answer came swift and short, before the radio silence descended upon them once again. Stephen caught the cries of the babies before they cut off abruptly, shrill and desperate, as desperate as the rivulets running down Loki's face. 

_"So do you,"_ Stephen said, pointing out the obvious. _"More than anyone else."_

 _"How can I?"_ Loki asked bitterly. He looked at the squalling babies in his arms, despair and helplessness radiating off him in waves. 

Stephen physically wrested Freyja, the louder of the two, out of the crook of Loki's arm. With his other free hand, he steered Loki to the nursing chair in the corner of the room where two lukewarm bottles sat untouched. 

Pushing Loki down into the chair, Stephen took the momentary distraction to scoop Freyr out of Loki's loosening embrace. 

He hoisted his two babies so they were chest-to-chest, their tiny chins resting on his shoulders. He murmured a soothing spell, shushing them gently in the now-routine effort to calm them. 

Stephen did not know how long he stood there, lost in the rhythm of exhausted rocking.

"I don't know what I'm doing wrong," he heard Loki say softly.

Now that the babies were quiet, Loki must have lifted the spell. Stephen suspected he was too fatigued to maintain it, judging by the deep shadows under his eyes. 

Stephen deposited his now sleeping babies into their respective cot carefully. 

The chair was not big enough for the both of them so he straddled the armrest, balancing himself carefully so he could wrap his arm around Loki's slumped shoulders. 

"You are doing nothing wrong."

Loki answered by slipping his arms around Stephen's waist. His bony shoulder poked into Stephen's stomach as he tightened his embrace as if hanging on for dear life. 

Recovering from the trauma of the twins' birth had taken a lot out of Loki and Stephen feared his husband was once again wasting away in front of his eyes. 

"You are doing absolutely nothing wrong," he reitererated, more fiercely this time. 

"Then why aren't they happy?"

"What do you mean?"

"They wouldn't stop crying."

"It's probably just colic, Loki. It's very common, especially when they're at this age."

"Why? Stian and Aife didn't have it when they were little."

"No one can say for sure. Some say it's wind, some say it's allergy to cow's milk or the lactose in formula milk- " Stephen hesitated; he knew how much Loki hated too many answers to one simple question. "Rarely it's reflux, which is more common in premature babies."

Predictably, it all came to a head in the form of one very, very wrong conclusion. "It's all my fault." 

On any other day, Stephen would have simply brushed it off with an insensitive but true, "Nonsense."

"Why do you think that?" He probed gently instead.

"If I had kept them inside for longer, they would not have been born premature."

Stephen shook his head. "You couldn't have. It was their time."

"I should have just breastfed them from the start." The tears were coming again, fast and furious. "They are half-human, half-Jotun and we're feeding them milk from a cattle."

"There's nothing wrong with that. I stand by my decision, Loki. I cannot - I _will not_ see you in pain. Not anymore, not ever," Stephen said stubbornly. "If anything, it's my fault."

"I can't even soothe them. I'm their mother and they won't stop crying." 

"They will." But Stephen's reassurances fell on deaf ears as Loki continued to cry in muffled sobs against his chest. "They will stop crying, Loki. Sooner or later."

"They hate me."

"That's silly talk. You're under a lot of stress at the moment, and they're sensing that off you. Babies are very sensitive to all sorts of stimulations."

That only made Loki cry harder.

"Shhh…" Stephen raked his fingers through Loki's dishevelled hair. He thought he had gotten good at this kind of thing. Boy, was he wrong. He was just as helpless, perhaps even more so; for every emotion Stephen may be experiencing, Loki must be feeling it a hundred-fold. 

He kissed the top of the curly head, his fingers unconsciously reaching up to knead the tight muscles of Loki's scalp; he could feel the knots loosen under his lips.

 _"They love you."_

Stephen may not be able to provide an instantaneous cure to Loki's pains, but he could be the soothing balm, a temporary respite, a safe place. 

_"We all love you."_

They sat quietly in the dark, long after the tears had stopped and Stephen's shirt dried, but Stephen still kept his arms around his one and forever husband where they belonged. 

He watched their miracle babies sleep. He had made a vow and he had every intention of keeping it. 

He would not be the first to let go. Not in a hundred or even a thousand years. 

_"I love you, Loki."_

Loki sank his head deeper into Stephen's chest. Sleep was beckoning.

 _"And I, you, Husband_."

**Author's Note:**

> I miss this universe so much. I haven't abandoned it, I promise.


End file.
